There Is Gambling Going On Here

If Donna had done nothing, she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more a month for insurance than she will now that she went to the marketplace, picked the best plan for her family and accessed tax credits at the heart of the health care reform law. "The info that we were sent by LifeWise was totally bogus. Why the heck did they try to screw us?" Donna said. "People who are afraid of the ACA should be much more afraid of the insurance companies who will exploit their fear and end up overcharging them." Donna is not alone.

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There always has been a kind of tacit agreement within the elite media concerning the Affordable Care Act not to mention the fact that the whole gimcracked structure depends vitally on the health-insurance companies not behaving like the greedy bastards they always have been. There is talk about Democratic sellouts and Republican intransigence, and who's up and who's down but the face remains that the president needed the involvement of the health-insurance industry to get the thing passed, and that the latter was grumblingly willing to go along because a) they'd get more customers, and b) because they believed that the PPACA would turn off the general enthusiasm for a more aggressive government-insurance solution on the order of the late, lamented public option or the glorious liberal pipedream of Medicare-for-all. The mistake came when people started to believe that these two elements would be motivation enough for the health-insurance industry not to behave the way it always has behaved. Even now, with Glitchghazigate, and the Oh-noes-Obummer-lied scandalpaloooza, still running wild, the health-insurance companies are maneuvering the way they always have. Leaving corporate profits at the heart of the system was always going to be a problem. Now it is. It would be nice if so many people who are doing their end-zone dances now -- many of them at the five-yard line -- would acknowledge it.

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